Internal Audit Raises Questions For EPISD

Investigators with the U.S. Department of Education?s Office of Inspector, and FBI officials, continue to review allegations of cheating within Bowie High School and the El Paso Independent School District.

Time, careers, and students have all moved on since allegations began surfacing in 2010 that school officials were altering records to raise scores on standardized testing.

Former state senator Eliot Shapleigh first made claims that Bowie High School was taking students out of the classroom to boost their scores. His claims included theories that students were transferred, held back, or deported. Eventually he claimed that Austin High School was guilty of the same infractions.

An internal audit, recently uncovered and published by the El Paso Times, shows that the EPISD knew that several issues had arisen during the 2009-2010 school year, including students being held back, skipping grades unexpectedly, and grades being altered.

In the report the auditor recommended that the EPISD begin self-reporting itself to the Texas Education Agency in situations where issues arose.

However, a spokesperson for the TEA told ABC-7 that a check with three departments did not reveal the findings of that information. In fact, they seemed surprised by the findings after they had performed their own investigation into the complaints and determined Bowie High School had done nothing wrong, but agreed that workers were not doing a thorough job.

Interim Superintendent Terri Jordan, who took over the superintendent job following the resignation of Dr. Lorenzo Garcia in the wake of federal charges tied to allegations he improperly steered a $450,000 no-bid contract to a company he had personal ties to, did not answer questions directly about this story. Instead, she issued a written statement telling ABC-7 that the school district is cooperating with investigators from the U.S. Department of Education and the FBI.

?We have taken strong corrective actions regarding many of the findings of the internal audit, which resulted from a directive from the Board of Trustees to the previous superintendent, and was completed in May of 2011,? wrote Jordan. ?We are taking action on any other concerns that emerge as a result of the work being done by the federal authorities with our full support.?

To read the full statement from EPISD Statement From EPISD